I think your life drawing stuff is heading towards the right direction - and try focusing on getting the forms right before worrying about shading and colours..
As for the conceptual pieces, there's too many anatomical mistakes and it becomes distracting to what you want to say in the piece.. i would suggest grabbing reference for them. Also know where your light source is at the beginning, and avoid using highly satuarated colours on skin tones. (the burn victim piece)
keep it up!

Thanks for the crit, Synnical! Where are you from, if you don't mind me asking (I'm from Canada myself)?

Could you be more specific about the anatomical errors that you see? After doing those studies and looking back, the only one that really seems obvious to me is the sell-out superheroine's right leg.

For the burn victim, I had an earlier version that was less saturated. I've attached it. How's it look in comparison?

Also got a couple new sketches up. The second is this costume concept for an average guy who wants to play superhero, but doesn't know where to start. So his costume is really thrown together: balaclava, paintball mask, hockey shoulder plate, martial arts arm guards, and military-style pants and boots. Before getting too far into that drawing, I'd like to get some crits on how I'm doing. Anatomy? Line quality?

well, for the first superhero character - his head is a tad too big, and the torso too short, makng the waistline appear higher..his right leg is rather stiff, and doesn't give off a natural stance.

I like the desaturated version on the burn victim better... again, some issues are with his/her(?) head being too large and the features position seems awkward due to the lack of defining bone structure (cheek and chin).

The superheroine needs a slightly longer neck and tweaking to how her left arm is connected, but overall, it's decent.

The new sketche on the guy looks good so far, except i would pull his torso back a bit so it doesn't appear he's being kneed in the back..or maybe it's the exaggeration you are looking for?

Edmontonian. Hope to work for BioWare when I graduate, but have to get myself up to speed in art skills, which I hope to decently do over the next four months until September. It's frustrating because there are a few of us in the University who want to do this sort of art, but the Faculty is so against it that we're forced to work on abstract stuff.

Thanks for the comments, again! Hope you don't mind one more piece, again just to weed out any mistakes before I take it too far. I wanted to try a more dynamic pose.

stylus, i understand where you are coming from with the abstract stuff - it must be frustrating for you. I personally think students should not be allowed to explore abstraction art before they have a good handle on the foundamentals. There's just too many bad art out there where abstraction and randomness are used to cover up the lack of skills of the artists.

Now, onto the new sketch - the real major issues i see with him is his left hand (the fingers are too long the thumb is bent awkwardly) and the lower body. (thights and calves are out of porportion to the rest of the body) I would say at your skill level, you should follow photographic reference closely and try to understand why forms appear the way they do (perspective, foreshortening, porportion,etc). One way to train your mind is you can trace a photograph underneath the paper several times, breaking the image down into simple lineworks, and then try to draw it again with out the photo. you can then compare them after and easily see which areas you are less acurate.

Yeah, I probably hope that I'm a lot better than I currently am. I've actually got a mannequin that I should've been using for poses like this. I think I'll start using them again. I've always wondered, is there a point where every artist worth his/her salt just does away w/ photos and mannequins and stuff and they just draw a pose because they can just understand how it's supposed to be drawn? Are those poses always 90-100% accurate, or does everyone, no matter how skilled, use references?

Nice work.
The last one seems a bit flat. It would help to block him from boxes, and that way get some more perspective for your work.
This is a very common to draw flat characters, and I guess I do it my self too, but that's just what sticked in to my eye first.

for some c/c i think most have been said.
Thou first thing on the burn victim, you got some wierd line there on the neck, is that supose to be some kind of scar ? Even if it is im not sure if you can get those kind of scars while beeing burned.
You might want to try to make a smaller contrast between the right and left side of the scars shadow, for example making the left sides shadow bigger and closer to the right ones.

The superheroine could use a bit more or less shadow on some places.
Some of the shadows on the "pink thingy" (dunno the name of it) is almost black. and if there can be black there it can prolly be under the neck, the skirt , between the arm etc aswell.

Your life drawing are great, you realy captured the facial expressions, giving the them a personality. Just keep doing them =)

I hope you understood my c/c and i gave some kind of help!
And excuse my english.

Thanks a lot, you guys. These crits really help. I hope I can follow up.

Resk: No worries, I understood all your comments. That pink thing is called a sash.

I hope no one minds one more pic for this thread. I tried another pose for that last character. I also tried using a wireframe/skeleton to help w/ the pose. Hopefully, it will be less flat than the previous one. Could I get some crits on it as well?

Hmmm... sorry, Synnical, I'm still not getting it. It looks like a slightly different pose than the one I drew. Is it because the right leg is twisting? Or is it because it's going up too much? Or something else?

So I painted in the lineart for that last one. Still not sure how to fix that right leg because I still don't really know what's wrong with it. But I'll hopefully be able to churn out more sound anatomy in my future works.